Toilet sheets are widely known as absorbent articles comprising a liquid-permeable top sheet, a liquid-impermeable back sheet, and an excreted fluid-absorbing absorbent body disposed between the top sheet and the back sheet, for treatment of excreta of pets such as dogs that are raised indoors.
Because such toilet sheets shift their position and become wrinkled, or sometimes folded over, when the pet steps on the top surface, measures have been devised to prevent such positional shifting or folding of the toilet sheet by means of pressing a frame body onto the top surface of the toilet sheet, as in the pet toilets disclosed in PTL 1 and PTL 2, for example.
However, with the pet toilet described in PTL 1, the frame body has a generally horizontal flat top surface, and therefore when pet urine and the like falls onto the frame body, it tends to remain on the frame body due to the action of surface tension, releasing bad odor or possibly being flung out onto the floor surface by movement of the pet.
Particularly in the case of dogs, which tend to excrete urine at the section of the toilet sheet near the frame body of the pet toilet, urine is more likely to contact with the frame body and result in the problem of urine remaining on the frame body.
In the frame body of the pet toilet of PTL 2, the sections extending from the top side of the frame body that faces upward toward the outer perimeter direction of the frame body are larger than the sections extending from the top side toward the direction of the inner perimeter edge, in a plane view. Consequently, even if urine contacts with the frame body, the urine is highly likely to contact with sections where it can more easily flow out in the outer perimeter direction, which may result in movement of the urine over the exterior of the toilet sheet and fouling of the floor.
The construction is such that the toilet sheet is spread over a base plate, in the case of the toilet described PTL 1, while the toilet sheet is spread over a pan-shaped tray in the case of the toilet described in PTL 2, and therefore the overall thickness of the toilet is increased by the amount of the base plate or tray.
If the thickness of the pet toilet is too large, the pet may perceive it as an extraneous object, possibly making the pet hesitant to step over the frame body and enter the toilet.
This has sometimes led to the pet failing to excrete in the pet toilet, and fouling the floor instead.